1. Brief Description of the Prior Art
In my U.S. Pat. No. 4,185,760, and my U.S. Pat. No. 4,365,733 entitled "SYSTEM FOR PASSING ELONGATED PAPER THROUGH A REPRODUCING APAPRATUS", I describe a system by means of which elongated, relatively narrow sheets of copy paper can be fed through a xerographic copying machine in synchronization with the feeding to the machine of elongated fan-fold type original documents. The system described in my two earlier patents satisfy the need for enabling the conventional xerographic copying apparatus to be utilized for producing continuous copies of such elongated original documents as galley proofs of manuscripts, oil and gas well logs, electrocardiograms, teletype printouts, strip charts made on various types of continuous recorders, adding machine tapes, computer printouts, the output of graphic plotters of seismic data, and the like.
That part of the system described in my U.S. Pat. No. 4,365,733 for feeding elongated fan folded original documents has worked well in practice, but it is limited in its capability for feeding variously sized fan-folded documents to the copying apparatus. Thus, where a fan-folded document of different width is to be copied, adjustments have to be made which require some skill, or an additional and different document feeding tray, having a different transverse dimension, must be placed within the system in order to accommodate the differently dimensioned document to be fed. Moreover, the stability of the original document feed tray in its position on the copy machine is such that it can be inadvertently bumped or displaced so that it will not feed truly without re-setting or re-adjustment.
Although the document feed trays utilized in the systems which I have previously patented are generally satisfactory where only one or two widths of fan-folded original documents are to be copied, they exhibit several less than optimum characteristics. I have now invented an improved feed tray which allows the feeding of various sizes of fan-folded documents to a reproducing apparatus in a more convenient and trouble-free fashion, and without the requirement to change out the feed trays as the original document size varies.